August 29, 2012

Traditionally, August in the Northern Hemisphere news business was called the "silly season." Political conventions and hurricanes aside, it was a time for weird, fill-the-space news stories to be run, even in the more staid newspapers.

August 26, 2012

I have been too busy for much blogging, but here is a scout camera pic. I always think that fawns should be losing their spots by now, but not so. They are still in their summer coats, even as the adult deer are starting — some of them—to change.

And some of the narrowleaf cottonwoods down by the (dry) creek have already turned golden and then dropped their leaves— even while the wild plums are not yet ripe enough to eat.

This is a sharp reversal or earlier trends downward. This matches my
hypothesis that we're seeing a broad cultural turnaround. Americans have
historically liked guns, shooting, and hunting. From the 1960s onward,
that was reduced. Now (at last, after fifty years) it's returning to the
norm.

In a news release, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation notes,

The just-released 2011 National Survey of Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation shows 13.7 million people, or 6 percent of the U.S. population age 16 and older, went hunting last year. That marks a 9 percent increase over 2006, reversing a previous downward trend.

Is this trend a response to hard times, as one of Hardy's commenters suggests? Or people becoming gun owners for self-defense purposes and then moving from target-shooting to hunting?

August 18, 2012

Walking the dogs last night, I noticed yellow leaves from the narrowleaf cottonwood trees lying on the ground beside the road. A few started turning yellow in mid-August. Drought stress? Usually their peak of golden shimmer comes in October — and I expect that most will hold their lives until then. But still, it's a sign.

Sometime in the last two weeks the black-headed grosbeaks who breed in the oak brush around the house departed without saying good-bye. So did the male rufous hummingbirds, although a few females remain, mixing it up at the sugar-water feeder with the resident broad-tails.

Evening grosbeaks' movements are mysterious. A flock of perhaps two dozen was here early in the summer, May into June, and then they disappeared. Now a few are back.

The big change was the cold front that came in on Tuesday. Now the highs are in the 80s F. (or less) instead of the 90s. And the sunlight has a warmer, yellow quality — due to the smoke from forest fires in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, etc. moving in with the northwest winds.

This is not autumn, but it is some kind of change.

Rain falls occasionally, but not enough. M. and I abandoning some of the outlying flower and vegetable beds. Gather what is there, let the rest dry up. I rolled up one soaker hose this morning, and I need to get out and start gathering seeds. Unlike this guy, I won't need a vacuum cleaner.

The temptation, however, is just to drink coffee on the porch and get an early start on autumnal melancholy — and the only cure for that is travel.

Within minutes, legal recruiter Morgan Warren,
36, of Houston had cut a mushroom the size of a portobello. An hour
later, while sipping wine, snacking and sitting in camp chairs the Four
Season staff brought, the group reconvened to examine the dozens of
mushrooms they had collected. . . . . Then
it was back to the SUVs, which dropped everyone off at an aspen grove
to stomp through a thicket of prickly plants and fallen logs to find
more species.

Apparently they go out, pick everything in sight, and then let some expert hired by the Four Seasons Resort at Vail. tell them what is what.

In the video, the designer speaks of starting with "an existing SAW gunner pouch" for the first version of the first-aid kit.

Ah, that's where the individual fire shelter pouch came from too! It sure fits the definition of "just kind of a brick on your side that gets in the way of everything." If you were issued the Large model, it's too big for the quick-extraction pocket on many fire packs.

August 09, 2012

Results indicate that a minority of roaming
cats in Athens [Georgia] (44%) hunt wildlife and that
reptiles, mammals and invertebrates constitute
the majority of suburban prey. Hunting cats
captured an average of 2 items during seven days
of roaming. Carolina anoles (small lizards) were
the most common prey species followed by
Woodland Voles (small mammals). Only one of the
vertebrates captured was a non-native species (a
House Mouse). Eighty-five percent of wildlife
captures were witnessed during the warm season
(March-November in the southern US). Cats
roaming during warmer seasons were more likely
to exhibit hunting behavior and the number of
captures per hunting cat is expected to decrease
with increasing cat age. Cat age, sex, and time
spent outside did not significantly influence
hunting behavior.

If you have decided that your cat is entitled to behave like a wild
animal, don't be surprised if your cat's life ends like that of a wild
animal -- dead from vehicle impact, bullet, trap, poison, or a mauling
from a dog or coyote.

August 08, 2012

Helicopter fills bucket in portable tank.
That's a work light on our brush truck to the right.Note the hat on the man watching.

Lightning and rain yesterday evening produced a magnificent 0.2 in. (5mm) of rain. Today we found the fires.

I was busy in a layout project when I heard M., who was on the veranda, start swearing. I thought she had a problem with her PowerBook. Then she came in and told me that the fire siren was blowing. I cannot hear when indoors, even with the windows open.

I started changing clothes, pretty sure that this was a wildland fire, not a structure fire. It was, two of them.

After the initial telephone and radio hook-ups, we ended up with me driving the brush truck, another volunteer with me (it seats two), and two more following in a private truck.

The newer fire was small, way up on a timbered ridge—a good three-hour hike from the road—on the national forest and not threatening any homes. We relayed that information to the sheriff's dispatcher.

Good, he said, why don't you go help at the D___ Creek Fire, which had been reported earlier.

So we went—18 miles over twisty mountain roads, up and down, mostly washboard gravel. We passed the fire, from across a valley, but our dispatcher does not know where the command post was.

The fire was in our county, but due to topographical reasons, the response was coming mostly from the adjacent county.

Finally we passed a US Forest Service truck, waved him down, and got the location of the command post.

We drove there, were greeted warmly — and told that the Forest Service was sending crews and air tankers and that the local firefighters were being demobilized — except for those driving water tenders, needed to fill the tank from which the helicopters were dipping water.

This message was delivered by a sheriff's deputy, but I found myself staring at his hat. It was a typical deputy's rolled-brim cowboy hat — but it had a suspension harness. What about that?

We started back up the twisty road, and my partner was asking, "Did you see his hat?"

OK, maybe I've lived a sheltered life, but I did not know you could get one of those. Neither did she, and she grew up on a local ranch.

Every day on a fire is a learning experience.

Back closer to home, we waited to refuel at the county Road & Bridge shop and watched an air tanker drop slurry on the small, high-on-a-ridge fire. Another Forest Service guy had told us that smokejumpers were going to attack it. They did not show up today, that I saw, so maybe tomorrow. The wind is fairly calm, so thus far I am not too concerned.

There went my afternoon. I still had to fill out an incident-response form, of course.

Americans cannot talk about class honestly. A lot of our talk about "race" is actually about class, which is why it is so illogical and even dishonest.

When you mix in food prejudices, you might find yourself meeting yourself coming around the corner.

I have had older students run the "I can't afford to buy organic foods" routine on me, but without examining their monthly spending patterns, I could not say if that was true or not.

Lots of good lines in Dreher's article. Here are some:

The food snob is a comedy staple (ever seen the BBC’s hilarious “Posh
Nosh” send-up of culinary elitists?) and, for many conservatives, an
object of political derision. It’s easy to make fun of liberals who
glide up to San Francisco farmer’s markets in their (metaphorical)
limousines, agonizing over the purity of the squash’s provenance with
the anxious attention of a medieval Scholastic to the immaculate
qualities of his syllogisms. You get the idea that you could chase some
of these people all the way to Canada with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos
tied to the end of a pole.

But far fewer people pay attention to reverse food snobbery—to folks
who are proud of eating junk, and lots of it, in part out of the
conviction that doing so offends Whole Foods shoppers, who, on this
view, “think they’re better than us.” When Michelle Obama announced her
program to encourage American children—one in three of whom is
overweight or obese—to eat healthier meals, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah
Palin attacked the First Lady as a busybody and a fatso.

District judge Emmet G. Sullivan did dismiss
allegations of mail and wire fraud, but he did so only because Feld
didn't have standing to file this charge. His ruling all but set the
stage for a class-action RICO lawsuit against HSUS for misrepresenting itself
in its fundraising campaigns across the nation. This lawsuit easily
could bankrupt HSUS, put it out of business and send some of its top
executives to prison.

I understand the argument that asks how pristine is a canyon with a highway(US 50) and a railroad in it already. But I do think that the Bureau of Land Management should have restricted OTR to the stretch between Texas Creek and Parkdale, because if there are highway blockages — and there will be — one could detour around on Colorado highways 96 and 69.

Upstream of Texas Creek, there are no detours, except very long, twisty, gravel roads through the mountains such as Fremont County Road 2 or an even longer highway detour up to Hartsel and Antero Junction.

It doesn't take much to close US 50 now: a little roadside fire, a car going into the river, a truck hitting a bridge abutment — I have seen all of these.

August 06, 2012

Our usual CSA farmer offered only spring shares this year, for various reasons, so last month M. and I were faced with making the rounds of farmers' markets to supplement our garden.

First we tried the Pueblo Riverwalk Famers Market, which starts a 4 p.m. on Thursdays for the after-work crowd. Once you sort out the artsies and craftsies, there were four food producers selling — all local, but non organic. The booths were jammed onto one sidewalk between Union Avenue and Victoria Street — one of the few spots with shade! We bought some Rocky Ford cantaloupe, which was riper than what the supermarket had.

On Thursday mornings you can try the Florence farmers market in shady Pioneer Park. It features one local organic producer (Lippis farm) plus some sellers of honey (sometimes), spices, goat cheese, and potted plants.

We visited the Cañon market a week ago — it is held on Saturdays — and came away with a few items, including some raspberry-chipotle jelly from Shirley Ann's Field Fresh Produce of Manzanola (down the Arkansas Valley east of Pueblo). Any economic activity in Manzanola needs to be encourage, and the jelly had a nice zing. You can buy Shirley Ann's products online.

Another market that we have not visited since last summer is held in Westcliffe on Thursdays from 2–5:30 p.m. Not too many vegetables are grown locally (compared to the early 20th century, when the Wet Mountain Valley produced lettuce, potatoes, sugar beets, and I don't know what all else—before refrigerated railroad cars brought everything from California). It should offer herbal remedies, local beef, and Amish (i.e., very sweet) baked goods along with veggies that are least Colorado-grown within the "foodshed."

August 02, 2012

It's been raining some (although not enough at our house), so M. and I decided to go mushroom hunting.

We went once last week, but brought back only about half a shopping bag's worth. Today was better.

We had filled two bags at the place we call The Mushroom Store when M., who was closer to the narrow Forest Service road, heard a car pass and then stop. Then we heard a man shouting something in the woods.

She came over to me. "He's calling, 'Anya! Natalia!,' " she said. "I thought that I heard kids."

"Oh, ****," I said, "Russians!" Notable mycophiles, those Russians.

Keeping in touch with soft, bird-like whistles, we faded away through the thick firs, crossed a barbed-wire drift fence at a place where we knew it was broken, and circled off down the ridge.

If they spotted us walking towards the Jeep with our heavy bags, we would be coming from the exact opposite direction from where we picked most of the 'shrooms. This is just basic Mushroom Tactics 101.

As quietly as we could, we drove away.

Then we tried another stop, hiking up a washed-out old road to a small mine. The road was just blossoming with Amanitas, but we found more king boletes as well. It's going to be a good year.

August 01, 2012

Another "wildlife taxi" run tonight. Some people in a semi-rural area of the next county north (5–10-acre plots, trailer homes, chickens and goats) had a found a ferruginous hawk huddled in their yard. Since there were loose chickens everywhere, that might explain why it was there.

They had caught it, put it in a cage, and called the Raptor Center. An earlier generation would have just reached for the shotgun, so sometimes there is such a thing as progress.

M. and I went through a strong thunderstorm on the way there, and it was still raining lightly as we headed home. Going into Nearby Town, there was a cop right on my rear bumper, and as we passed the city limits, he turned on his overhead lights.

I thought that I was only 1-2 mph over the posted limit, so I started mentally rehearsing as I pulled to the side: "Emergency!" "Sick bird!" But he swung around and dashed on by.

Then my cell phone, sitting on the Jeep's center console, started beeping and buzzing. I had a warning from the National Weather Service about flash floods. I did not even know that it would receive severe-weather alerts!

Leaving town, I could see the cop's lights a couple of miles ahead. Then they halted. As we approached, I could see his cruiser parked at a junction and him struggling into a reflective vest while he waved me to stop.

A bridge ahead was washed out, he shouted.

I asked him about a rural gravel road further out on the prairie. It was open, he thought, so we turned around, backtracked a few miles, and then took the alternate route. I shot the photo by a bridge on that road, which was in no danger.

We made it to our rendezvous with the center's director, who squeezed the hawk's breast, said it was a juvenal (immature), which we had guessed, and that it seemed underweight. Maybe it had seen those chickens as its last hope for a meal. Instead, it ended up on a three-county road trip in a cardboard box. But, barring some illness that was not obvious, maybe it will bulk up on mice and then be released.